Monday, November 19, 2012

Taxis In Malaysia, Emblematic Of our Woes

The moment I got back, was greeted by a vicious queue for taxis, bought the stupid ticket for RM80 and had to throw away because the queue was nearly an hour's wait ... they said it was due to renovation being done to some parts of the road/building. B.S. The whole system is controlled. If you have a system, make sure it works, you do not want the first impression to be bad for tourists arriving in KL.Had to dash for the KLIA Express instead, but its the first time it was full, can you believe it. Some had to stand. Something is not right. Even if you have a controlled airport taxi system, you should be flexible in that when there are not sufficient airport taxis, there should be a marshal or two to guide other normal taxis to take passengers away from the airport. I am sure you can take a higher percentage of the fare from these taxis, and they'd still be willing to ferry passengers instead of going off empty.It is so stupid.How much money we spend on advertising for tourism a year? Malaysia Truly Asia, B.S. ... till a visitor tries to get a cab and get charged RM50 for a 5km trip.Why can't we rectify this mess? We can spend billions building Putrajaya and Cyberjaya but we cannot solve the taxis system. We can spend billions on Nusajaya and we cannot solve the taxis problem. The taxis issue is emblematic of what is wrong with corporate Malaysia, or anything to do with money.The government cannot do anything because there are warlords controlling various taxi groupings. Are they so important and threatening that we cannot better the system for all? Why do we farm out taxis into "influential groups" and then shrug our shoulders when we know it needed to be fixed? We are always at the mercy of these VIPs who somehow "knows the right people" that makes it OK to leave the country in a mess.Where is the political will? I guess there is none as we dice and slice portions of the industry to you know who and who you know. Then we cannot do anything when we want to better the system. You can replicate the taxi issue with almost every other sub sector of any industry in the country. There are always vested interests everywhere.We have to grow up, if you do not do it, the people will do it for you one way or another. My prediction, the ruling party will be lucky to win more than one state in the peninsula in the upcoming election. Mark my words.